• The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is the world’s largest trade pact
• It covers the 10 Asean nations, along with Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea
• The pact involved eight years of painstaking negotiations, much of it face-to-face, and there were also virtual meetings
• The Singapore negotiating team became close like a family through the years of handling the 15 signatories and their agendas

SINGAPORE — She was first shocked. And then disappointed.

Ms Sulaimah Mahmood recalled how she froze when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in November last year that India declined to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) during a summit in Bangkok, Thailand.

The chief negotiator of Singapore's team for the world’s largest trade deal said that it was her greatest pain in the last eight years working to bring RCEP to fruition.

“Nobody expected it… It took a few days to accept that. But the instruction we had is for us to carry on with the work, conclude the negotiations,” the 63-year-old said. Ms Sulaimah has been leading Singapore’s negotiating team since RCEP discussions officially started in 2012.

Singapore's chief RCEP negotiator, Ms Sulaimah Mahmood. Photo: Janice Lim/ TODAY

A year after that big shock, RCEP was finally inked on Nov 15 by the 15 countries involved.

In addition to the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea are also signatories to the trade agreement, which seeks to lower tariffs of goods traded among these countries.

Asean comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Despite India dropping out, RCEP is still the world’s largest trade pact, covering 29 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product, or economic output.

Six members of Singapore’s negotiating team sat down with the media on Wednesday (Nov 25) and shared their experiences working on this project and the personal sacrifices they have had to make over the years.

These six members are part of a bigger team of more than 40 officers from various government agencies, who worked across the 20 chapters of the RCEP agreement, which ranged from investment to e-commerce and trading goods.

Besides Ms Sulaimah, who has more than 30 years of experience in the Ministry of Trade and Industry and was involved in other trade negotiations such as the Asean-India Free Trade Agreement, some in the team were far younger, such as Ms Giselle Lee, aged 27.

Being a young officer, Ms Lee said that she was initially very eager but she learned over her four years on the negotiating team that “things take time”.

One of the reasons why negotiations stretched over eight years was that there were elections taking place in some countries, leading to a change in government and policies.

Mr Tay Lide, 33, who joined the RCEP negotiations in 2013, said that there was a lot of fluidity they had to handle.

For example, Ms Sulaimah said that Japan changed the lead of its negotiating team four times.

Bumps in the road such as this were coupled with how all 15 countries had their own agenda that they wanted to achieve — and this all further dragged out the process.

One common theme across all six interviewees was how the team has become a second family, given the amount of time they had spent with each other over the years on overseas trips and through meetings.

Ms Janice Cai, 35, joked that she sees Mr Tay more often than she sees her husband.

“There were so many Asean trips, so many Asean meetings, where you would spend, like, weeks together. It was about close to 18 hours every day,” she said.

This accelerated as the negotiations reached their culmination, when they had meetings with their Asean counterparts more often.

Ms Lee said that it was common for them to work until 3am to push out reports, or have teleconferences with Cabinet ministers at 11pm.

She recounted how they even had meetings in the oddest places. Once, the team huddled together with Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing in the business section of the airplane while they were flying back from Bangkok after India’s shock announcement.

Ms Sulaimah said that it would have been difficult for the team to push through RCEP negotiations if not for the support and understanding of their real family.

The long hours were not just spent in formal meetings and summits.

Ms Regina Tan, 40, who joined the negotiating team in 2017, said that lunches and tea breaks were really the perfect time to speak to overseas counterparts.

These informal interactions probably played an equally important role in trade negotiations often used to build trust.

The sideline conversations, the subtle eye contact with those in other negotiating parties, were part of the strong rapport that was cultivated to garner support, Ms Lee said.

That, however, has all disappeared with the Covid-19 pandemic, since physical meetings and overseas travel have largely stopped.

With meetings now just consisting of people staring into computer screens, Ms Lee acknowledged that the change has been quite difficult.

Nonetheless, the relations built over the years did not just disappear.

Ms Sulaimah’s phone became a critical negotiating tool — she often dropped WhatsApp messages to her foreign counterparts to check on their progress.

Admittedly, she recognised that RCEP is not a perfect agreement, because all those involved also had to be realistic in the face of the numerous and often conflicting demands of the 15 signatories.

However, she said that the final result is substantively better than the various free trade agreements that Asean had signed with its partners.

Even though the conclusion of RCEP took three years longer than Ms Sulaimah hoped for, she was still “very, very happy” when the deal was finally clinched and signed.

However, she said that her work is not done.

The next step in getting the agreement ratified and coming into force is the most important and she said that it will take probably the next two years before that target is achieved.